What You Need to Know about the German New Right
An Interview with Martin Lichtmesz

3,598 words

The following interview with occasional Counter-Currents contributor Martin Lichtmesz was published in Hungarian by the news portal Magyar Jelen on March 2, 2024.

Could you introduce yourself and describe the scope of your activities?

I was born in Vienna in 1976, lived for 14 years in Berlin, and returned to my home country of Austria a decade ago. I have a been a writer for German Right-wing journals and magazines, both print and online, since 2005. Presently I do most of my work for the blog and bi-monthly magazine Sezession and the associated Institut für Staatspolitik in Germany. Next to writing my own books on several subjects such as politics, culture, and religion, I have done several translations from French and English, most successfully Jean Raspail’s famous immigration dystopia The Camp of the Saints. I’m connected with the Austrian branch of Generation Identity, though I do not participate in their activities. I occasionally do streams with my friend Martin Sellner. Sometimes I appear on anglophone channels as well.

You’ve written a lot about movies at the Sezession site, and published a book about German cinema after 1945 (Besetztes Gelände. Deutschland im Film nach ’45, or Occupied Terrain: Germany in Film after ‘45). Who’s your favorite Hungarian director and why?

In fact, I know very little about Hungarian cinema. I was impressed by several films by Miklós Jancsó, especially Csillagosok, katonák (1967). Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó (1994) was a mind-blowing, if gloomy and exhausting, experience. I sat through an entire screening of it twice, which is quite a test of endurance, as it runs for almost eight hours at a very slow, “hypnotic” pace. I have also enjoyed Az én XX. századom (1989) by Ildikó Enyedi. I particularly liked the scene where the Austrian maniacal actor Paulus Manker repeats his role of the doomed misogynist philosopher Otto Weininger, which he also played in his own insane film Weiningers Nacht. I just noticed that all three I highlighted are black-and-white films.

How would you describe the Neue Rechte (New Right) to our readers?

It’s a non-dogmatic umbrella term for the “dissident,” non-mainstream Right-wing spectrum in Germany. It’s mostly used as a handy catchword, and not everybody put into this box likes or endorses it. It generally refers to people with an “identitarian,” ethnonationalist point of view. Very often you will find a stance we call solidarpatriotisch, which is concerned with socioeconomic issues on a patriotic basis, critical of free-market liberalism and such. Very common is an “anti-Atlanticist” attitude, a belief in sovereignty aimed at breaking Germany free from American domination in the long run (a very long run, one must realistically say). It is also often used as a self-description for those who wish to draw a line between themselves and the remaining Alte Rechte (old Right) groups, which form quite different milieus and are characterized by clinging to certain forms of historical nostalgia, symbolism, and ideologies that the New Right rejects. There have recently also been quite a few overlaps with the “Right-wing populism” phenomenon that has been on the rise since 2015 (at the very least), though it has certainly already passed its zenith.

The intellectual center of the “New Right” in Germany today is in Schnellroda, a small village in Saxony-Anhalt, where Götz Kubitschek’s Rittergut is situated, a renovated, centuries-old manor which hosts the seminal publishing house Verlag Antaios. Together with Erik Lehnert, Kubitschek organizes “academies” where young Right-wing activists from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland meet for a weekend to connect socially and professionally, listen to lectures and speeches, and have thorough debates about given topics. Last September the overarching theme was propaganda in all its aspects, for example. Other academies were focused on geopolitics, anthropology, architecture, the nation-state and the future of Europe, state and order, party politics, violence, feasibility, and general discussions of current political situations. The lectures are conducted on a high intellectual level and try to cover as many aspects of the given topic as possible. It is not, however, a philosophical and theoretical “ivory tower” that you see there, but education for practical political and strategic purposes. Many of those who attend work with the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), the most important and successful patriotic opposition party in Germany. Substantial parts of the “eastern” AfD have very good relations and contacts with Schnellroda.

Of course, the powers-that-be who are being challenged do not like it and try to put pressure on this kind of unwanted organizing and networking, namely through the activities of the so-called Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or the “Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,” an institution set up by the state to demonize and vilify political opposition. To sum up, when people talk about the Neue Rechte in Germany today, they mostly mean the network around Schnellroda that consists of identitarians, certain parts of the AfD, independent publishers, initiatives, media, freethinkers, and “influencers.” Not all share the same opinions, but have a basic common outlook.

The French Nouvelle Droite has a wide range of influence outside France and the Francophone world. Is the situation similar for the Neue Rechte? If so, could you mention some thinkers, politicians, or organizations that have been influenced by that “school of thought” in Germany, Austria, or in other countries of the non-German world?

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To be honest, I don’t think there has been much, if any, influence outside Germany, as very little has been translated. Probably some of the Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland’s actions have been inspiring internationally, such as when they climbed onto the Brandenburg Gate and unrolled a banner reading “Safe borders, safe future” in 2016. We certainly have contacts with similar-minded people in many other European countries as well, both in the East and the West, as well as both in the United States and Russia. There is a bigger German influence at work in the background, however, as both the Nouvelle Droite and Neue Rechte have strong ideological roots in the so-called “Conservative Revolution” of the 1920s and ‘30s: important household names of classic thinkers such as Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, Ludwig Klages, Ernst Jünger, and Martin Heidegger come to mind.

Could you introduce Antaios Verlag a bit? What is the scope of the books that you publish there? Could you mention a few that are really important, in your opinion?

Antaios has been around for more than 20 years now. The scope of our books is quite broad. There are theoretical works, essays, novels, polemic pamphlets, philosophical meditations, interviews and monographs on important thinkers and writers (such as Ernst Nolte, Georges Sorel, Armin Mohler, Mircea Eliade, and Nicolás Gómez Dávila, to give you an idea). Certainly there is a focus on the usual Right-wing themes: mass immigration, the “Great Replacement,” ethnocultural identity, and analyzing the countless hydra heads of our enemies: gender theory, anti-racism, globalism, transhumanism, technocracy, and “COVIDism.”

A popular and good-selling series are the Kaplaken, short books in a format that comfortably fit into your pocket that are written by a variety of authors on a variety of subjects. These make for fast, informative, and often entertaining reads; are ideal as gifts with which to enlighten and red-pill your friends and relatives, and are much-desired collectibles as well (there have been 87 Kaplaken published so far). It’s hard to pick the “really important” ones because there are many, and I am certainly a bit biased here. There are two recent theoretical books that received much praise by our readers: Politik von rechts (Politics from the Right) by Maximilian Krah, a politician from the AfD, which tries to define the essence and outlines of contemporary Right-wing politics; while Martin Sellner’s Regime Change von rechts (Regime Change from the Right) is a stunning and elaborate sketch of the metapolitical strategies necessary to create change in Germany and Western Europe, something which to my knowledge has never been done before in such a detailed and concrete way. Other influential works were Solidarischer Patriotismus (Solidaric Patriotism) by Benedikt Kaiser, and Systemfrage (The System Question) by Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, a scathing analysis which deals with the difficult matter of whether change within the present (and seemingly doomed) political system is possible at all (the author denies it).

A bestseller by our standards was also Mit Linken leben (Living with the Left), written by Caroline Sommerfeld and myself, a sort of “survival manual” for people who have “wrong” opinions, and which aims to help them to win arguments, establish a political orientation, see through the Leftist nonsense, understand their “types” and psychologies, and above all deal with social pressure within the family, workplace, school, university, groups of friends, and so on. It has a lighter tone than most of our books, and even contains dating tips for Right-wingers! It was published in 2017, at the peak of the “populist” wave following the “migrant crisis,” and I must admit that some parts of it already seem a bit dated and historical, like a time capsule.

Another book I liked a lot was Tristesse Droite (Sadness Right), published in 2015, which documented a series of evenings where a small group of New Right protagonists, including myself, met in Schnellroda for long, open talks about “God and the World” (as we say) that went on for many hours. This resulted in a very unusual, thoughtful, and intimate book.

Do you have any book projects or translations that are in progress? Which of your own books or translations do you think are the most important?

There is one bigger project I have been working on for a while and which will take more time, and that is a sort of film lexicon about films that I think are important or valuable from a Right-wing point of view. I do not necessarily mean “Right-wing” movies (there are few that would entirely classify as such), but rather movies that have historical, intellectual, or aesthetical value for Right-wing thinking. This has blown up into a sort of mammoth project, because I ended up with about 200 films that I want to include. Plus, I want to add some general reflections about the question and politics of censorship, the responsibility of the artist, the tensions and commonalities between art and ideology, the good and bad sides of mass culture (I think there are good sides, too), and the present and future of film viewing in a totally digitalized age — when classical cinema is, I think, dying for good.

There is one related, older book of mine which was actually my very first, and which I still think is a good work; how good it is is for others to decide). It is called Besetztes Gelände (Occupied Territory, 2010) and is basically a long, yet tight and sharp essay on the depiction of history in the movies, with a focus on the Second World War and Germany’s role.

My most “important” and ambitious book, however, in my humble opinion, is called Kann nur ein Gott uns retten? (Can Only a God Save Us?), published in 2014. It’s a very thorough, 400-page meditation on the nature of religion and its relation to politics (to simplify the matter a bit), seen from a (predominantly) Catholic or rather, if I can say so, “Catholicizing” point of view. (I was very much inspired by people such as Charles Péguy and Georges Bernanos back then.) I do not, however, consider myself a “true” Catholic, and remain a seeker rather than a believer. In any case, I poured my whole life and heart into this one, and it is first and foremost a rather personal statement, though I tried to cover this fact up as well as I could. So, if a translator is interested, I’d be happy to have it translated, because I think I have not yet surpassed that one.

Legatum Books will be publishing an English translation of your book Ethnopluralism in the near future. Can you tell us a bit about it, and what relevance it has? Why is the book, and the ethnopluralist concept itself, important?

I also have a more complex, and perhaps more provocative question regarding ethnopluralism. As far as I know, the late sociologist and historian Henning Eichberg first used the term, and shortly thereafter it became an important concept for the Nouvelle Droite as well. So how is it possible that, according to the Antaios Verlag’s website, you’re the “first to present this concept, its potential, and its misuse comprehensively”?

This is a misunderstanding. “Presenting” the concept does not mean I have invented either it or the term ethnopluralismus, which was indeed coined by Henning Eichberg in 1973 (in an anti-eurocentric, anti-colonialist, rather “Leftist” context). The point of my book is that ethnopluralism, just like universalism, exists only in the plural. By this I mean that there has never been a single binding theory or doctrine under that name, but rather different versions of it that did not necessarily go by that term. My book is the first to present a critical overview of ethnopluralist theories, their historical context, their core elements, and their intellectual and spiritual “ancestors.” My formula is this: “I call all concepts that defend nationhood and peoplehood in general as an intrinsic good as ethnopluralism.” As a political stance, it is an attitude that most nationalists adopt today, understood as a principled position whereby all peoples of the world are seen as having a right to self-preservation and self-determination, and to defend their ethno-cultural identity against universalist overreach and leveling, which is today commonly referred to as “globalism.” This concept claims to have overcome the chauvinism and “racism” of the “old Right,” which often regarded other nations and races as “inferior” and therefore a legitimate subject of conquest, domination, and colonization.

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In ethnopluralism, other nations and races are instead regarded as “different,” without passing value judgements, implying a cultural relativism of sorts. It is rather a defensive than an aggressive, invasive kind of nationalism. It is a “live and let live” concept set up against a perceived historical threat to all nations and ethnicities of this world: The utopian idea of “one world” that is a dream to some and a nightmare to others, in which all humanity shall be united under a single world government and will have overcome all barriers of ethnicity, race, and nowadays even gender. As Alain de Benoist put it: “I’m not fighting the identity of others, but the system that is destroying all identities.” Guillaume Faye called it “the system that kills the peoples,” and this killing of particular national identities is regarded as the final result, the endgame of liberalism. This ethnic uprooting can take many forms, and it can be argued that technological society in itself leads inevitably to a dissolution of nationhood and ethnocultural identity, at least to some degree.

In the Western world, the most imminent and dangerous way of dissolving nations are policies of mass immigration, labeled as the “great replacement” by Renaud Camus. The ethnopluralist stance against this would emphasize that the right for a homeland and self-determination should go both ways: We Westerners will not seek to colonize the Global South again, but we will also refuse to import the Global South into our home countries. But initially ethnopluralist ideas had nothing to do with fending off mass immigration (even as late as the 1970s, when Eichberg first developed the concept). They can be traced back primarily to the German Romantic — and rather apolitical — philosopher Herder, who saw the Volksseele — the “soul of the people,” a word he preferred to the better-known Volksgeist, which was more Hegel’s cup of tea — as being threatened by the rise of the Industrial Age and universalist Enlightenment ideas as early as the late eighteenth century. In the following century he became the godfather of particularism and nationalism, which competed with the other great ideological streams of that time: liberalism/capitalism and socialism/Communism.

You can see already in this sketch that I have a rather long and complicated story to tell, and I do not get to the French Nouvelle Droite and German Neue Rechte until the final chapters. In my book I discuss not just Herder and Hegel, but also the paganist-polytheist critique of Christianity (that dates back to antiquity); the “monumental paintings” of world history by Gobineau, Spengler, and Rosenberg that sought to offer theories of decline and fall; Julius Evola’s ideas of a “spiritual race,” Renan’s idea of nationhood; and the proto-ethnopluralist, cultural-relativist theories of Franz Boas and Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, a heterodox race theorist who worked within the framework of the National Socialist regime. I found many surprising parallels and overlaps between the latter two, which to my knowledge nobody has noticed before. A crucial figure in my book is the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who is probably the most important post-war theoretician of ethnopluralism (and also another who never used that word). The framework I use to contextualize the concept is taken from the German sociologist Rolf Peter Sieferle, who wrote epochal books that throw a clear light on the emergence of the modern world as few others have been able to do. Only in the last chapter do I offer my own opinion, which is quite different. I do not see ethnopluralism as a truly sustainable, watertight philosophical concept, and its political usefulness is rather limited. However, I view it as a “regulative idea” of primarily ethical value. That’s it in a nutshell, which I could expand further on here, but it is better to look it up in my book. The English version will feature some updates, expanded text, and bonus chapters. In fact, I think it is a theme that looks simple at first sight, but is in fact as vast as an ocean. My book is trying to give a glimpse of this “family” of ideas and its adversaries.

What do you think of Viktor Orbán as a politician?

I cannot go too deeply into that, because I don’t know enough about it, but it may surprise you that to most of us Western European identitarians, Orbán, despite the many faults he certainly has, is rather a role model we look up to and hope to imitate. The political and metapolitical situation in Hungary seems so much preferable to what we have. It is a goal that we are aiming for. Then again, unlike Hungary we have the problem that our home countries are already severely damaged by mass immigration and unfavorable demographics. I would have to ask Hungarian dissidents such as you what you think is wrong with Orbán and his policies.

What does Central Europe as a region or as a basis of identity mean to the Neue Rechte and/or in your own worldview?

Well, I can only talk about my personal worldview, and it is rather sentimental or aesthetical than seriously political. There was a time when I hoped that Austria could join a sort of “populist” Visegrád bloc that would be set up to oppose the globalist policies of the European Union and of the Federal Republic of Germany. That would have essentially been a sort of political “rebooting” of a space that was once dominated by the Habsburg Empire, and of which I am still rather of fond. Today, I’m afraid this will never happen. Personally, even if I consider myself German in a rather abstract or historical ethnic sense, my immediate identity is not very “Teutonic,” but rather specifically Austrian, with sympathetic feelings toward the east. Looking at my family tree and the surnames in it, I’m in fact a “Habsburg Empire mutt,” with ancestors (apparently) coming from Hungary, Slovenia, and Bohemia. Still, as far back as I can trace them, the different branches of my family have remained in roughly the same geographical area, spoke German, and have been Catholics for at least two centuries.

Could you describe something about the political trends in contemporary Austria, particularly in light of the upcoming European Union and presidential elections?

I must honestly say that I find contemporary Austrian politics rather tiresome, ridiculous, and annoying, and I rarely vote. This is a country ruled by the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), a corrupt, mafia-like, fake “conservative”/”center-Right“ party that is far more harmful than any of their leftist “opponents.” (They are in fact currently in a coalition with the Green Party.) My contempt for them grew out of all proportion during the madness of the COVID years, when they basically terrorized the whole country, and which at least provoked a healthy, patriotic grassroots opposition and fostered mistrust in the mainstream media, who are terrible whores of those in power. (I don’t want to insult actual prostitutes by comparing them to journalists, because they are more honest and at least do good things for society.)

The only choice among the opposition available is the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which is also flawed of course, but it at least has one brilliant man at its top, Herbert Kickl. He was insanely defamed by the media two years ago because of his principled opposition to the lockdowns and vaccine mandates, but he is now, at least according to the latest polls, one of the most popular politicians in Austria. Some already project him to become the next Chancellor. I’m rather pessimistic about that, and I generally have little faith in parliamentary politics, which usually changes little, if anything at all. I’m a bit anxious that putting Kickl in power will disappoint and lead him to compromise too much, as is usually the case with any candidate who you hope will finally save the day. I admire him so much for his courage, intelligence, and sincere attitude that I want him to remain “pure” — which I think he can only do in opposition.